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Google killed Maps Timeline, so I self-hosted a better one [OwnTracks]
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this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2025
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Google also accidentally deleted a random amount of user's timeline data if you didn't immediately catch it and restore from back up last March before the affected backups were overwritten. If you didn't keep a close enough watch on your timeline to know that that happened, everything before ~Feb 2025 is gone now.
Ask me how I know. Yes I kept up on permissions. Yes I had backups on. No I didn't have a new device. I even have dozens of available gigabytes of paid storage on Google One.
I'm sure it will only get more stable due to maps and timeline being revenue generators that encourage investment.
I recorded data since 2013. I loved checking out previous vacation trip locations or just randomly browsing through where I've been. All gone now.
Did everything Google recommended but they just deleted it and there's no way to get it back.
I really wish I would've made an offline backup or something before.
Same, been kicking myself since I found out it was all gone a few weeks ago. Don't know why I didn't make a 'just in case' backup / export.
Still infuriating they can just go "oops all gone". It came through the roll-out fine, I remember looking stuff up in February. As far as I can tell it was a later unrelated glitch.